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  #221  
Old Posted Aug 6, 2011, 3:57 PM
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Originally Posted by haljackey View Post
In London many would say that Ontario stops at K-W or the edge of the Greater-Golden Horseshoe.

Greater Toronto could become it's own province. Big cities operate separately from the provinces in other countries (like China) and it seems to work well.

If we wanted to, Ottawa-Gateneau could become a federal district as well.
I agree - I have long believed the Greater Toronto Area needs to separate and become its own province. The rest of Ontario has suffered long enough from the provincial government showering the GTA with riches and Toronto-friendly policies that screw over Northern Ontario, rural Southern Ontario, and smaller cities such as London. The economic prospects of this part of Ontario are so bad compared to the GTA that yet another one of my 20-something friends has just left London for greener pastures in the Toronto area.

The Ottawa-Gatineau area being a federal district would be a neat idea, although Quebec sovereignists would be pissed.
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  #222  
Old Posted Aug 6, 2011, 5:30 PM
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The Ottawa-Gatineau area being a federal district would be a neat idea, although Quebec sovereignists would be pissed.
I know we're getting off-topic, but why? Currently Ottawa is outside of Quebec. Making the National Capital Region it's own standalone district means it has no affiliation with Ontario whereas now that's where the city resides.
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  #223  
Old Posted Aug 6, 2011, 7:22 PM
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I know we're getting off-topic, but why? Currently Ottawa is outside of Quebec. Making the National Capital Region it's own standalone district means it has no affiliation with Ontario whereas now that's where the city resides.
Gatineau is part of Quebec though. It is part of the metro region.

Shitty news about the economy that's for sure.
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  #224  
Old Posted Aug 7, 2011, 1:24 AM
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Great job, GreatTallNorth2, for having the Comment of the Day in the Freep!
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  #225  
Old Posted Aug 8, 2011, 1:41 AM
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In Windsor many would say that Ontario stops at London and as a side note I know that up in Sudbury they say the province stops at Barrie.
I was just in Sudbury today, funny how they're complaining about a lack of attention from the provincial government. Overall the city seems to have everything planned out much better than its southern counterparts, and the infrastructure is surprisingly well maintained. The place sprawls (probably a result of being built on rocks), but it's much cleaner and better-kept than London, or even parts of Toronto.

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I agree - I have long believed the Greater Toronto Area needs to separate and become its own province. The rest of Ontario has suffered long enough from the provincial government showering the GTA with riches and Toronto-friendly policies that screw over Northern Ontario, rural Southern Ontario, and smaller cities such as London.
This would be unworkable from a constitutional standpoint as we'd have to re-open the whole debate with Quebec. I also think it's a little unfair, since I would imagine that Toronto-area residents contribute a significant portion towards the province's coffers in the form of taxes... are they not entitled to receive a proportional share of that back in the form of services? Instead of advocating constitutionally challenging proposals like this, how about we just work on getting rid of McStupid and reducing the amount of money lost in wasteful government spending sprees so it can be re-allocated to municipalities?

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We are not getting the short end of the stick. Other cities have vision (K/W, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Windsor), do studies, make proposals and lobby the government. Every single project underway in Ontario is because the municipality has come up with the plan. We sit on our hands and then whine about the fact we are not getting funding. Talk to any MPP or MP about London. They will tell you that London doesn't come to the table with a plan. London could build LRT or do the ring road tomorrow if we really wanted it, but we don't. We dither. Londoners lose.
Unfortunately I'd have to agree with this statement. You can't blame Ottawa and Toronto for everything- the lack of leadership starts at home. That being said, K-W is not always gonna be the golden standard that we ought to aim for. The city as a whole is becoming over-reliant on one firm and its ability to innovate and compete, kinda like how London used to be with Canada Trust.

Last edited by Wharn; Aug 8, 2011 at 2:34 AM.
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  #226  
Old Posted Aug 8, 2011, 3:03 AM
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This would be unworkable from a constitutional standpoint as we'd have to re-open the whole debate with Quebec. I also think it's a little unfair, since I would imagine that Toronto-area residents contribute a significant portion towards the province's coffers in the form of taxes... are they not entitled to receive a proportional share of that back in the form of services? Instead of advocating constitutionally challenging proposals like this, how about we just work on getting rid of McStupid and reducing the amount of money lost in wasteful government spending sprees so it can be re-allocated to municipalities?
Of course, but on a per capita basis the Toronto area still seems to receive better funding contributions from the provincial government. The primary indicator of this is public transit.
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  #227  
Old Posted Aug 8, 2011, 10:59 PM
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Of course, but on a per capita basis the Toronto area still seems to receive better funding contributions from the provincial government. The primary indicator of this is public transit.
What Toronto likely gets is a bigger subsidy than it deserves in order to run its inefficient, union-staffed operations. As far as infrastructure projects go, however, I'm more inclined to say the place is underfunded.

Don't get me wrong, London Transit is pretty bad (hence my decision to spend a large portion of my disposable income running a car), because of both a lack of planning at the municipal level and a lack of funding from higher levels of government. That being said, Toronto's transit system is actually terrible for a city its size. Prior to Ford's endorsement of subway expansion, Toronto's plans to expand transit were also terrible. The thing is Toronto actually HAD plans, while London twiddled its thumbs over basic shit like road upgrades. Thus we lost out on stimulus.
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  #228  
Old Posted Aug 9, 2011, 12:20 PM
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  #229  
Old Posted Aug 11, 2011, 4:46 PM
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London has eclipsed Windsor as a poster child for high unemployment in Canada and officials here say they feel that city's pain.

"We've had the dubious distinction of having the highest large urban unemployment rate in Canada for quite awhile and we can certainly empathize," said Ron Gaudet, CEO of the Windsor-Essex Economic Development Corporation.

London Mayor Joe Fontana has called an emergency jobs summit for Friday in response to a rising unemployment rate, which is now higher than Windsor's.

London's jobless rate was 9.1 per cent in July, which was the highest of any large urban centre in Canada, while Windsor's had dropped to eight per cent.

"We've been there and we don't want to go back," said Mayor Eddie Francis. "But when our rate was climbing, we made some very strategic decisions.

"We could have buried our heads in the sand and waited it out but instead we decided to reposition this region for future growth by reducing our debt, holding the line on taxes and modernizing our transportation infrastructure to make us more attractive to outside investment."

While Fontana couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the London Economic Development Corporation said the summit is designed as a brainstorming session to develop some short-term strategies but that in the long term, London will be looking for provincial and federal job creation funding.

"We're been relatively thriving in our region but now with modest declines in our employment numbers, we have to redouble our efforts to develop long-term job creation strategies and the summit is the first step in that process," said Kadie Ward, director of marketing and communications for the LEDC.

Francis said he reacts cautiously to unemployment numbers "because they can turn on a dime but the biggest mistake we can make now is to think we've turned the corner and take our foot off the gas.

"We have to remain aggressive and continue to focus on our job creation and investment strategies."

Francis, who was out of the country on economic development-related business, declined to say where he was travelling but said he expects the trip to bear investment fruit by the fall.

In July 2009, Windsor's jobless rate peaked at 15.2 per cent and has been either the worst or second-worst in Canada for most of the last 24 months, until Friday's surprising figures were announced.

In the past 12 months, Windsor's unemployment rate has fallen by 3.4 percentage points while London's has increased by 0.9 percentage points.

Gaudet said the temptation is to "start high fiving when the rate drops and going into deep bouts of depression when it increases, but job creation is a long term process because it's very difficult to move the numbers in any appreciable way in the short term.

"The important thing is to avoid finger pointing and to tap into municipal, provincial and federal job-creation strategies as much as possible.

"And what we have to remember is that we are all part of the Southwestern Ontario economic region and when one community hurts, we all share that pain," said Gaudet.

While some point to the fact that Windsor's labour force has fallen by nine per cent in the past 12 months, suggesting that people have either left the city or given up on finding employment, which can have a positive impact on the unemployment rate, StatsCan's figures are generated by the same method in every city across Canada.

In July there were 1,200 fewer people in Windsor's workforce compared to June, 900 more people working and 2,000 fewer people unemployed.

In London, there were 300 more people in the workforce compared to June, 800 fewer people employed and 1,000 more people unemployed.

It's expected that London's unemployment rate may get worse before it improves, with Ford planning to close its St. Thomas assembly plant in September, throwing an additional 900 area residents out of work.

Closure of a parts supplier which builds seats for Ford is expected to cost the area a further 400 jobs.

London's unemployment figres includes St. Thomas.

Fontana's summit is scheduled for Friday and will include London region politicians, labour officials and representatives of business, manufacturers, post-secondary institutions, health care, home building and real estate.
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  #230  
Old Posted Aug 11, 2011, 6:01 PM
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London's unemployment figres includes St. Thomas.
Well there's your problem. This city get such a bad rep from it's 'metro' that I'm fed up.

I consider a city to have a metro when there is at least one other sizable community adjacent to the city limits or close by with good transportation connections (rails, transit, freeways, etc) and are interdependent on each other.

Counting St. Thomas' numbers in London's figures is ludicrous.

Statscan, give me the real numbers for London.
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  #231  
Old Posted Aug 11, 2011, 6:55 PM
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Well there's your problem. This city get such a bad rep from it's 'metro' that I'm fed up.

I consider a city to have a metro when there is at least one other sizable community adjacent to the city limits or close by with good transportation connections (rails, transit, freeways, etc) and are interdependent on each other.

Counting St. Thomas' numbers in London's figures is ludicrous.

Statscan, give me the real numbers for London.
Ya no question it really skews the numbers, I would like to see where London is on it's own as the number certainly would be lower.

You also have to add in that while Windsor is no longer the lowest, how many people have left looking for jobs else ware? That is why I hate these so called reports they really do not give good information.
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  #232  
Old Posted Aug 11, 2011, 8:03 PM
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I can't really see such a small city like St Thomas making that much of a difference in the London area numbers. I have friends in London who find it impossible to find any work at all. Hopefully Londons' mayor will be as proactive as our mayor here in Windsor, we would still be at 15% unemployment without his vision and aggressive remaking of our city. I wish the best of luck to London in the coming months, hopefully we can all thrive here in the southwest.
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  #233  
Old Posted Aug 11, 2011, 10:26 PM
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I can't really see such a small city like St Thomas making that much of a difference in the London area numbers.
If St. Thomas had an unemployment rate around 30% (which it likely does), then there is no question that it would noticeably skew the numbers upwards. But a good deal of this is also London's mediocrity manifesting itself. I think another problem might be people losing unionized jobs and being unable to find work elsewhere. For example, the Toyota plant in Woodstock is very wary of taking on people who used to work at Ford, CAMI or GM.

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"We've been there and we don't want to go back," said Mayor Eddie Francis. "But when our rate was climbing, we made some very strategic decisions.

"We could have buried our heads in the sand and waited it out but instead we decided to reposition this region for future growth by reducing our debt, holding the line on taxes and modernizing our transportation infrastructure to make us more attractive to outside investment."
Aside from the debt issue (City of London has massive cash reserves and an AAA credit rating, which is better than 'murrica) this sounds exactly like what we need to do. Where's dat perimeter highway?

Last edited by Wharn; Aug 11, 2011 at 10:39 PM.
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  #234  
Old Posted Aug 12, 2011, 1:24 AM
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It's true that finding employment in London is difficult. I've been very lucky, although I owe that to my education level to some extent.

I know someone who is unemployed in London, and the only place she's been able to find that is hiring is a Wendy's location. Another friend works at an outbound call centre (one of the worst jobs in the universe) and has been unable to find anything else over the past two years. Of course, Stream is "Now Hiring", as they have been since Lord Gainsborough lived in Upper Canada.
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  #235  
Old Posted Aug 12, 2011, 2:25 AM
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  #236  
Old Posted Aug 12, 2011, 11:49 PM
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This article is written by the editorial board of the Windsor Star. It's interesting to hear how this news is being covered in other locations (i.e. it seems few people realize that St. Thomas is a major problem but it's never mentioned). I voted for Fontana but I still don't know what to think of him...he deserves more time I guess. Good that they didn't leave DeCicco-Best off the hook though.


London's Numbers
Mayor needs jobs strategy
Aug. 12, 2011

London Mayor Joe Fontana is holding an emergency summit today to try to figure out how to bring more jobs to his hard-hit city. Late last week the metropolitan London area earned the dubious distinction of having the highest unemployment rate in Canada; a spot held by Windsor for the last two years. If Windsor was stunned to learn it had lost its No. 1 ranking, London was even more shocked to discover it had won the title with an unemployment rate of 9.1 per cent in July. Windsor’s rate had dropped to eight per cent.

That led Fontana to summon everyone from business and labour leaders to politicians to a roundtable meeting designed to brainstorm solutions. “We need to take a scan of where we are at in different sectors and look at what we can do, along with the federal and provincial government, to get over this hump for 2011,” he told the London Free Press. Fontana went on to say he was “not so concerned about our future, but there is no doubt that results like 9.1 per cent causes us all to gasp and say in the short term, there are head winds we are facing.”

That last statement shows just how differently two mayors approach the same problem. Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis is always concerned about the city’s future, which is why he’s scoured the world in search of diversification opportunities. There’s no “short-term” thinking when it comes to finding ways to stabilize our local economy. Francis doesn’t wait for investment to come knocking. He goes out and woos it. Perhaps that’s because Windsor is used to the boom-and-bust cycle that has dogged us for decades, thanks to our dependence on the auto industry.

We know what it’s like to be the first in for every recession, and Francis, along with a strong city council, has made it a mission to bring in new industries to cushion those blows. London has, traditionally, been a white-collar town with a stable economy built on well-paying government, insurance and banking jobs.

Francis didn’t exactly offer Fontana friendly advice when he saw the StatsCan figures, but he did respond to the situation this way: “We’ve been there and we don’t want to go back,” he said. “But when our rate was climbing, we made some very strategic decisions. We could have buried our heads in the sand and waited it out, but instead we decided to reposition this region for future growth.” That included doing what was needed “to make Windsor more attractive to outside investment.”

Fontana is new to the job, having snatched the mayor’s chair away from Anne Marie DeCicco-Best in October. She’d held that post for 10 years, and some could say that it was during her tenure that things began to slip. When unemployment rose for 10 straight months in 2009, DeCicco-Best responded to the news by blaming senior levels of government for not helping London enough.

“London is threatening to become the land that recovery forgot,” Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist for BMO Capital Markets, said at the time. So there were clearly signs that in the aftermath of the 2008 global meltdown, a strategy was needed. It just didn’t seem to materialize. This isn’t intended to come across as gloating. Windsor knows all too well that circumstances can change in an instant. We also know how important it is for every city in southwestern Ontario to be economically healthy.

But Fontana has a long road ahead of him, and the problems can’t be solved through summits. He needs to get out there and pound the pavement. He needs to sell his city.
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  #237  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2011, 2:49 AM
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An earlier article in the Windsor Star mentioned this:

Quote:
In July there were 1,200 fewer people in Windsor's workforce compared to June, 900 more people working and 2,000 fewer people unemployed.

In London, there were 300 more people in the workforce compared to June, 800 fewer people employed and 1,000 more people unemployed.

Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/business/...#ixzz1UsC4H0JH

I'm glad Francis isn't a friggin' moron (unlike the witch who used to run the show here) and realizes that unemployment figures are fickle. From first glance, it looks like 60% of the reduction in unemployment simply came about from a shrinking labour force. Not that it's thoroughly bad; there is obviously a surplus of labour in Windsor and people are able to put their skills to better use elsewhere.

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I voted for Fontana but I still don't know what to think of him...he deserves more time I guess. Good that they didn't leave DeCicco-Best off the hook though.
I thought Fontana was an idiot from the day I first saw his platform. The reason I voted for him is because he's still smarter than Anne-Marie, so it's an improvement. But none of our politicians (except maybe Van Meerbergen) "get" what needs to be done. It all comes down to this: we need better people running our city. If anyone from the SSP London Local runs in the next election, I will do everything in my power to ensure that they win. Molson? haljackey? manny?

Last edited by Wharn; Aug 13, 2011 at 2:59 AM.
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  #238  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2011, 3:04 AM
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Oh and speaking of which, more bad news for Southwestern Ontario. The god of wealth must not think highly of us.

http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2.../18541691.html
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  #239  
Old Posted Aug 13, 2011, 3:46 PM
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If anyone from the SSP London Local runs in the next election, I will do everything in my power to ensure that they win. Molson? haljackey? manny?
haha. The problem is others and I want to get things done. Thus, council is no place for us because things get tediously studied, debated and assessed, but not much actually gets accomplished.

Say what you want about Van Meerbergen, but I find he's trying to make council more productive. Big government or small government, what really matters is efficient government.

Time for them to get off their high horse because that horse ain't so high anymore.
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  #240  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2011, 6:46 AM
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A big factor to London's employment numbers is our poor levels of transportation infrastructure.

The London of today has relatively the same roads, highways, bus service that it did 10, 20, 30 years ago. While other cities have made serious improvements in all these areas to help not only the people that live their to move quickly, efficiently and by different modes, but also employers (manufacturers especially). London has fallen behind, which makes it look more like the city of the past than one of the future!

To be fair though, we do appear low on the totem pole of senior government levels of investment. Toronto is/always will be top dog of Ontario of getting money for infrastructure. Other areas of the GTA are also benefiting due to their closeness to Toronto. Border cities Windsor, Sarnia, Fort Erie, Niagara Falls either have or are getting major investments from senior government.

Meanwhile the only things London has on the horizon is VMP becoming a freeway sometime by the mid-21st century, 2 new interchanges one of which will make VMP a truncated freeway, a BRT system that looks tentative at best (most likely just being an express route system), inner-city roads that are over-capacity with unpgrades set 5-10 years from now with no hope of them being actually implemented. Essentially the same situation now, just negligibly better.

London needs some type of a vision of what type of city it wants, how its going to get there, and what investments are needed locally, provincially, and federally. Investment in a good and balanced transportation network is something that would hand in hand with economic prosperity. If only our council would recognize this and stop pissing and wasting our time talking about backyard chickens, deer culls, NIMBY opposition to development and progress.
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